Pioneer unveils first 25GB Blu-ray drive

First release promises disk capacity five times that of current technology

Pioneer will this month ship one of the first Blu-ray drives to hit the market, enabling PC users to store up to 25GB of data on media similar to CDs and DVDs. With plans for 200GB disks within a couple of years, Blu-ray could eventually supersede DVDs for making backups and distributing information in businesses.

The Pioneer BDR-101A supports the Blu-ray BD-R, BD-RE, and BD-ROM specifications for writable, re-writable and read-only disks, respectively. It is also compatible with all DVD formats except for DVD-RAM. Availability is planned for the end of March.

Blu-ray technology uses a blue-violet laser beam that can be focussed more tightly than those in CD and DVD drives, allowing a Blu-ray device to record and read data at high density. The standard is backed by many IT and electronics vendors, such as Sony, Philips and HP. A rival standard, HD-DVD, is backed by firms such as Toshiba and NEC and will store up to 30GB on dual-layer disks.

The first generation Blu-ray disks can hold up to 50GB in two layers. However, while the BDR-101A can read dual-layer BD-ROMs, it only supports single-layer writing. Future drives will support four, six, or eight layers, fitting up to 200GB on a single disk.

"One single-layer Blu-ray disk is equivalent to five DVDs, but the media is the same form factor that users are familiar with," said Pioneer product planning engineer Brendan Sheridan.

The BDR-101A does not support standard CDs, but this will be added in the next generation along with DVD-RAM compatibility, Sheridan said. It is expected to cost £340 - £400 initially, while rewritable media is expected to cost about £10 each.